Upgraded Z-Axis Design

I’m right in the middle of designing a dust boot which will be quite similar to the SuckIt, and even at a glance I can see that it’s not likely to fit. The SuckIt mounts T-track (which is typically 5/8 to 3/4" wide) against the front face of the carriage just inboard of the screws for the X wheels, and from the pictures at the top of this thread, Kyle’s improved Z axis is much wider, leaving very little space between the Z axis and those X wheel screw heads.

Looks like I’ll have to tweak my design, but I’m glad Bob asked this before I had already built one!

@EvanDudzik the Z-axis leaves 17mm of clearance on each edge. This is a little less than 3/4" (~19mm) but that could be mounted with offset fasteners.

Another option would be to utilize a spacer plate to go between the z-axis and the X carriage. It is difficult to say what the best solution would be since there are no design resources or specifications available for the Suckit product.

The SuckIt ideally has a 3.632" spacing between supports. That is inside edge to inside edge.

Each track is 3/4" wide. 3/8" thick.

Anybody with the original mounting bracket can measure this to verify.

Added up that’s 5.132" or 130mm.

The Xcarriage is 140mm wheel hole center to center.

So this is the work-in-progress model for my dust boot, which I think is so far very similar to the SuckIt; I measure about 3.5" between inside edges of the T-tracks, which is close to what JustinBusby quoted (and over an inch too narrow for Kyle’s Z-axis to fit between)

One could fabricate new top/bottom brackets so that the T-Tracks were mounted out in front of the wheel hole screws but the arms would be spaced wider and about 8mm further out from the carriage so you’d also have to either fabricate new arms to match up with the original boot, or fabricate some kind of adapter to go between the tabs on the boot and the slots in the arms on either side. Seems doable!

The other option that I’m considering (since I’m starting from scratch, not retrofitting a SuckIt) is to drill and tap the sides (or maybe the front) of the fixed top and bottom blocks of Kyle’s Z axis and then I can bolt brackets to that in order to hold vertical T-Tracks, which would also be more secure.

Kyle, would you mind sharing the basic dimensions of the top and bottom blocks (LxWxH) and the spacing between them? I’d like to mock these up.

@EvanDudzik right now the width of all of the major parts is 116mm. That includes the frame plate, carriage plate, and bracket bars for both assemblies. I can definitely narrow it down at least a little bit, maybe down to 100mm. It is tricky because it is a balancing act between the spacing of the rods and the positioning of the spindle mount from the X-Carve. I haven’t gone too far with milling blanks etc. yet so I can still make some tweaks to the design.

I have performed some analysis of my design and I should be able to get the width down to 102mm (from 116mm). Any more would require either significantly reducing the length of the mounting bolts for the spindle holder which could have very bad results (easy to strip threads). Essentially I could squeeze another 2mm out of the width by reducing the thread engagement of the mounting bolts down to about 5mm which IMO is nowhere near adequate in aluminum. The current designs allows for over 12mm of thread engagement which should be fairly robust.

If I update the design to 102mm that will provide 24mm of clearance on each side of the assembly, plenty of room for a 3/4" or 7/8" wide T-channel. This is of course assuming the T-channel is allowed to overlap the X gantry wheel bolts. @EvanDudzik this would require you to drill clearance holes through your T-channel and/or offset them along the Y axis to clear the heads of those screws.

The 102mm width I think would allow the Suckit to work with some modification of the brackets. The X-Carve brand dust collector may also work with custom mounted T-slots and some minor modification / shim of the support arms and dust shoe body.

Based on Justin’s quoted geometry, it would need to be only 93mm wide for the SuckIt to fit with only top/bottom bracket modification, which seems unfeasible for your Z-axis. In order for the T-tracks to be spaced any wider, it would require making new top/bottom brackets (rather than a quick mod) and also making new arms or some kind of adapters. I would argue that once you cross that bridge (having to make a bunch of new parts) at all, you may as well go all the way - make the Z-axis whatever width is best for it, and worry about making the dust boot hardware fit the Z-axis and not the other way around.

While I don’t own a SuckIt, in the process of tweaking my own design I think I will end up with something very close to what it would take to adapt a production SuckIt as well - and if I can get a few more measurements from someone who owns one then I can conceivably make it directly compatible.

The SuckIt will work with some linear Z axis. I’m upgrading to the same linear Z that Phil uses and the SuckIt is going to fit no problem.

As long as the linear Z axis is less than 3.632" wide, the SuckIt will work. With their new mounting bracket style being 4 pieces, it may not even need modification to use those.

However, @KyleKronyak stated his Z axis is 116 mm wide (possibly down to 102mm). That’s 4.57" which is almost an inch too wide to support the SuckIt system. For reference, the Z axis that I am using is only 3" wide.

Given the Xcarriage has 140mm spacing between the wheel holes on center and 7mm holes, that leaves only 133mm between the holes Shave off another mm for the eccentric spacers that are M8 so you’re down to 132mm.

If he has a 116mm wide Z axis, that leaves only 16mm available which means only 8mm on each side.

That is a TIGHT fit for anything except maybe a M5 hole for screws to move out a piece of extrusion or T-track.

@PhilJohnson’s dust boot may work because he mounted it offset with screws but, due to the width of the Z axis it may still interfere with the extrustions or you have to push out the extrusions so far that you can’t get the boot to mate with the router itself.

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@JustinBusby if you mill relieve holes / slots in the T-track it should be possible to overlap the track with the wheel bolt holes. I am going to update the design to narrow down to 102mm for this reason and a few other practical reasons largely related to work-holding in the mill vise. The X carriage is 152mm end to end so with allowing for bolt hole relief and some slop / misalignment it should be able to accommodate 24mm on either end.

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The problem isn’t so much as to where the track is, it’s that the track has to be a certain distance apart for the actual dust shoe to work.

Even at your 102mm (just over 4"), it violates the SuckIt spacing by about 3/8" which would require modifying the actual boot and not just the mounting brackets. Cutting in reliefs won’t fix the addition of 3/8" or more between the support arm and the SuckIt boot.

There’s only 2 solutions for those with SuckIts:

  1. Modify the dust boot itself to support a larger cross spacing and relief the T-track to fit (and potentially lose the tuning ability of the eccentric nut/spacer for your X carriage wheels)
  2. Completely design a new mounting mechanism for the existing dust boot that adapts to the wider Z axis. Maybe it’s just a modified support arm that allows for a wider stance?

In my opinion, there’s no quick solution for this. Your Z axis, even at the narrower dimension, is still too wide for the stock SuckIt dust boot (and most likely the Inventables dust control system as well). There will need to be design work/modifications needed by SuckIt dust boot owners.

If you want to see CAD models of similar dust boots, look at what Inventables published for the dust control system. I believe it’s based off of the SuckIt system.

Outside edge to outside edge looks to be 4.86"

The outer of the T-track is 5.132"

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I did mine with like this


Super easy to remove and make adjustments

The thru rod design looks like it won’t work with those of us who changed to thru axles instead of mounting bolts on the X axis.

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I will make it a point to order one of the Suckit kits in the near future – I can’t image it would be too difficult to make an adapter kit. The same would likely apply to the Inventables dust collector kit.

I contacted the Suchit folks some time back and explained to them that more and more X-Carve users were switching to larger/wider Z axis’s and that many would like a Suckit that would work with the new wider units. They didn’t seem too enthused about the idea of redesigning their product to satisfy Their X-Carve customers. The only way to get them to take notice is if X-Carve users contact them and make their wishes known.

I emailed them a couple months ago about something and never heard back from them at all. Then when I saw the X-Carve dust boot I figured they had closed down and just getting royalties.

We’d probably have better luck with getting X-carve to update their design.

I have one that clamps around the router and has different bases that hold on with magnets with different length brushes. It works okay but probably not as well as the ones that stay down at the work piece. Once I upgraded to a larger tube back to my DC it made a huge difference.

@PatrickLesher Could be – they do look awfully similar in a lot of ways. I will probably eventually make brackets for both, for now I want to get the main z-axis done though. Feature creep is bad for any project.

If / when I make adapter brackets they will probably be glass reinforced cast urethane. While not as pretty as laser cut polycarbonate, it is super strong and being that it is molded, can be made into complex 3d shapes fairly easily. The adapter kit would also be priced very low. (maybe $5-10 per set?) I can’t give specifics since I don’t even have a design for the adapter at this point.

I’m interested in the taller version with direct-drive and I have a Suck-It that I’d like to be able to use with it.

Count me in for a taller version with direct drive.

I modded mine to fit with a c beam!